Cinematography sets and supports the overall look and mood of a film’s visual narrative. If the script is what to tell, cinematography simply means how to tell. Storytelling is the soul of a movie but when it comes to cinematography, it is the one considered the heart of cinema.

Gregg Toland was born May 29, 1904, in Charleston, Illinois. In 1919 he was working as a messenger boy at the William Fox Studio at Sunset and Western in Hollywood. One day he looked up at a cameraman on a highly parallel, hand-cranking a Bell and Howell. He decided then that was what he wanted to do.He was the man behind Citizen Kane and so many other movies. His work with deep focus brought a different level of realism to the movies. He was recognized for his innovative approach and creative mindset and contributed a lot to the golden age of cinema.

Career

Apart from his groundbreaking work with deep focus technology, Gregg also had an interest in playing with the themes of time and space in cinema. This is noticeable in lots of his work including Citizen Kane, The Best Of Our Lives, etc. Gregg Toland started his career in the film industry at the age of 15. He used to work as a messenger boy at the William Fox studio. A year later he became an assistant cameraman, working on two-reel comedies for director Al St. John. In the mid-1920s Toland worked with cinematographer Arthur Edelson as the second cameraman on several films.His first movie was The Bat, which came out in 1926, it was one of the earliest American films which used deep-focus photography techniques.

Style

Toland insisted that cinematography should serve as a narrating device and should take the viewers deep into the scene while carrying the story forward.  By using deep-focus photography, he used to puts the foreground, background, and middle ground all in focus. Toland has a different style of capturing the moments. Before him, most Hollywood movies had actors shot straight on, sitting, or moving through naturalistic sets.By the mid-1930s, when Toland began producing his most resonant work, he was shooting actors with an impressionistic flair-filming them from below or positioning them in front of mirrors. He was so good with his work that George Barnes immediately offered him the role of assistant cameraman.

Films

Toland worked with many great producers of that era and he displayed his talents as a director of photography in films such as Dead End (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), The Little Foxes (1941), The Outlaw (1943), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Enchantment (1948).